Case Study: Ikea's pop-up success

As part of its marketing activities leading up to the launch of its 2013 catalogue, Ikea created giant pop-up rooms in its stores to drum up anticipation around the launch.

The campaign resulted in the number of people talking about Ikea, spike from 801 to 10,669 people for Singapore while in Malaysia it went from 2, 346 to 21,175, making for a 700% and 1100% increase in the respective markets.

Giant pop-up cardboard rooms, called its "Countdown Rooms", were created and the rooms changed their themes daily, from ‘living' to ‘kitchen' or ‘children's rooms'. Meanwhile, online, customers were able to check out the changes going on in the rooms at all times.

The countdown room activities of the nine days from all three Ikea stores across Singapore and Malaysia were streamed live on Ikea's Facebook app. Local artists were invited to perform in the various rooms be it singing, reciting childhood experiences or even cooking. Fans were also invited to share stories on the Facebook page.

This resulted in 35, 319 personal stories of customers being created on Facebook and fans submitting more than 1000 moments through pictures and video posts.

"The positive results from the Catalogue Campaign are a testimony that we are off to a good start in consumer engagement by being surprising and relevant in the way we deliver our messaging," Irene Lau, regional marketing manager, Ikano Retail Asia said.

She added that the catalogue campaign is the biggest campaign of the year for Ikea with new products and "new inspirational ideas to share with people".